2019-03-06: Horizon Signal
- Log: Horizon Signal
- Cast: Isiris Shango'Ra, Leah Sadalbari, Loren Voss, Lan Lilac
- Where: Nisan
- Date: March 6, 2019
- Summary: Gebler investigates the whereabouts of a surveillance team that had been sent in to discover the cause behind a disturbance at a Gate outpost. However, things are not as they seem.
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
The GETHSEMANE is not easy to access.
The codename for a massive underwater base discovered and established by survey teams years folded upon years ago, the base has provided a valuable foothold and safezone for research and intelligence collection operations in the years since the Aveh-Kislev war has been devloping. Many conventional Gear advancements have been produced from this location, though it is not a name many of the rank and file would recognize. Of course. That's what 'top secret' means.
It has been roughly three weeks since all communications ceased from the Gate outpost leading to the base off the northern coasts, and expeditionary teams sent to the area to reestablish the link have not reported back. At this point, it has been supposed that dangerously high Ether levels may have rendered the area dangerous. Even worse, some partial flooding may have befallen the base, or at least such is what initial aerial scans and surveys have reported.
Once passing through the electric bodily transmission gate to the site off the coast, the scent of wet metal permeates the entirety of the area, as the entry halls are primarily composed of wet and rusted catwalks leading through a thick glass shielded area showing the waters above. The idea was that the shields could be retracted and the area flooded in case of enemy incursion, but in this case, the entry hall's motors are offline, and the emergency pumps have been triggered, just barely compensating for the sheets of water curtaining sections of the catwalk network from the laboratories and the storage areas proper.
The entire system seems lopsided, as if the base was built on an incline of a handful of degrees, going uphill to the command regions at the head of the base. There are greater truths to be had in Gethsemane, and this is known to those who have perused even the basic files to be the base's normal orientation. The dark shapes sliding by below the catwalks in the flooded sections, however....
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
All that means that the base has some amount of value--and of course, that there is a contingency in place. So, this sort of thing naturally falls to those with the appropriate clearance...
"Don't be surprised that you haven't heard of it," Leah had pre-empted Loren about the base. "It's not really in your field." A beat, "It's been three weeks. The teams sent in haven't reported back. It isn't going to be pretty. So we have two objectives, both exclusive."
Leah looked between Loren and Lan then, nodding once. "We retake the base... or, if that's impossible, we destroy it, and all research left within." Pause. "I hope you like water."
But that was then; the scent of wet metal is here, of rust and other things, and Leah Sadalbari will walk first of the group. She naturally has a copy of its schematics, from before, and for the Ether dangers... Well, she mentioned them, naturally.
But 'natural' is almost certainly the wrong word.
"Make sure to keep any cuts covered. Consider this a field trip." A beat, "...A very dangerous, exciting field trip."
"It's about as close to the beach as we're likely to get for a while."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He had not, in fact, heard of it before.
Somehow, he managed not to grimace when she brought it up. "A black site, huh..." he muttered, shaking his head. More audibly: "I get the idea. So they've fallen out of contact and we're going to head in to find out what happened."
He paused.
"Or find out what happened to the people who went in to find out what happened. ...You know, they had a warning about that kind of thing on the battlefield when I was in Jugend," he said, pushing his glasses up his nose. "'Don't get your unit killed trying to save one person'. ...But we don't really have a choice here, do we."
They don't. At least there's always the option of blowing the site up if it's completely jeopardized. Generally speaking, this isn't an option most combat medics have on the table.
That was then, this is now. Clad in body armor for the first time since the Photosphere, Loren secures his helmet. "Understood. ...Some field trip," he adds, dryly.
He pulls out a tablet-shaped device. "I'll see if there are any signals in radius. Maybe someone's alive."
Probably not, though.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Appropriate clearance and military secrets both mean very little to Lan. It's a Secret Underwater Base with Possible Monsters and more importantly, Possibly People to Save. "If there's anybody left, we'll find them!" She gives Loren what is intended to be a reassuring pat on the shoulder. Her hand clangs a bit dully against his armor.
In deference to the extreme environment, she's... not wearing anything different than usual. No, wait - there's a medical pack tied to her belt. She hasn't abandoned those first aid lessons, after all...
She follows Leah into the darkness, only lifting a hand to call forth a light source. It casts shimmering light onto the walls, reflections bouncing uneasily off of the murky water below their feet. "...Those probably aren't normal fish, are they," Lan murmurs after a beat.
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
Definitely not, Lan. Well, some of the long, thick, eel-like fish do have nice little lights near their heads, if you want to take a closer look. This might contribute to why there is a disturbing amount of BLOOD near the control panels for the interlocks but nothing much in the way of bodies. At least, blood is what that looks like, that ruddy dark slick congealing on the boot-safe ridges in the catwalk metal.
The Gethsemane, aside from the small hacking job needed to access the basic command interfaces and security algorithms, is not particularly hard to navigate. Ether levels remain flat as one follows a structure called 'the spine' through the corridors, most of which are not gargantuan in size, but certainly many times larger than one might expect for a relatively small laboratory base off the beaten path. Certainly, building and maintaining it this far down in the sea would have been an extreme feat of engineering even today, and to think that it's been going on for as long as some of the operating systems flickering on dated screens indicate is an intense feeling. The security systems, albeit malunctioning, are not all updated to current Solaris standards, and so pose relatively little resistance to an up-to-date kit, and someone aware of old historical system exploits.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the analog systems.
The Ether saturation is high in the Gethsemane, and the steady thrum and churn of energy can be felt in the belly of the base. While saturations were generally low closer to the entrance, they seem to uptick the further once enters into the base, as does the evidence of massacre. Bloody streaks and unidentifiable parts long foul and long dead reek in the sealed spaces, with the flooded sections providing the only respite. However, the ominous creak of boots dragging across the ground sound as a gate is disturbed, and autocannons sound off, filling the air with deep bass booms. A gate at the far end of the sentry hall opens and shuts incessantly, and a body drags himself in, soaking wet and infested with barnacles. He is also riddled with autocannon fire. He's setting off motion alerts in an area that was prior secured.
More autocannons pop out from nearby walls, opening fire on the man in the bloody lab coat, filling him full of lead. It does not stop him. Nor does it stop his buddies, who are shot more as they shamble through the opening and shutting gate. One more gets caught in the gate and is partially mashed. And he still keeps coming, breaking onto the catwalks. The autocannons really are doing a great job shooting the intruders as they shamble forward. The fact that they're glitched out hopelessly doesn't seem to be a problem at all.
As long as nobody in the party moves. Like, at all.
And the barnacle-infested researchers don't get to the not-moving party before the autocannons can kill them. Uh, that is, if they can be killed by autocannons.
Good luck with that.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
Leah did not actually say very much about the people who went in. Not until Loren and Lan expressed interest in saving them, at which point she simply smiled. "I know that I can count on the two of you," she answers.
She, too, is in armor of a sort, though not her full regalia. She carries a very, very large sword as well as the spear that she carries, and to Loren's concern... "It's true, that's a fair warning. But what's here is too important to leave alone--important enough to send multiple teams despite the obvious danger."
Leah works with the light source. It's fine. The fish, though--
"These don't rise so high as to be seen on the surface," Leah answers simply, her uneven gait clanking against the metal of the catwalks as they go. Once at one of the terminals, Leah makes short work of accessing its systems; her clearance is enough under normal circumstances to get most places, and she is talented in the use of Wind Ether to access systems for which this is not the case. "Hmm," she announces, with what little they learn from those. "It seems that this won't be quite enough." Despite the dim locale, the sea in all directions, the pressure and the oppressive feeling of danger here--Leah's demeanor does not change. Perhaps that makes things more frightening, rather than less.
"In we go. If you start to experience headaches, nausea--stop, and tell Loren," Leah directs, with the unspoken statement that Loren should know well enough to stop at that point and tell her. But in the base they go, and doors at least present little issue. There is more blood.
Or, is it blood? Still, Leah does not react much to it.
The scents are awful. They get into the nose and do not leave, no matter how one might hope. But the creak of boots...
"Hmm," Leah vocalizes, considering the man walking through the autocannons. ...Then another. She does not move, yet. Not for the moment. She watches, first, to see...
"We'll have to make it through. Hold this position as best you're able," Leah directs. "I won't be very long." She slips a strange mask onto her face from her belongings; it has no apparent place for her eyes, for her mouth, anything, though it secures well enough. It is, perhaps, a helmet being technical. When she speaks again, her voice is strangely modulated.
"I will deactivate the cannons. Do not allow the subjects to touch you. If they were still alive, they wouldn't be walking through autocannon fire."
It is not so much that Leah swims, in the next moment, as that she steps off the catwalk. As incredibly heavy as she is... She just steps.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Enough that they'd continue to throw lives away... huh. On this he makes no comment, but Leah may be able to interpret his feeling from the degree of his silence.
It's as how he felt about the Tzadkiel, in a way.
As a medic, it would be nice if they could save whoever can be saved. But as is his nature, he does not here hold out much hope for that. Under the circumstances.
Maybe the investigation team. Maybe them, at best.
"Leave them alone," he answers Lan in regards to the fish, shaking his head. "I don't even want to know what's down there."
Fish the water this close to the 'outgassing' from this level of facility... there's no way it could be good. "She's right. If you start feeling sick, or tired, or experience any inexplicable pain, let me know immediately. The levels in here aren't bad yet, but it could get worse."
In they go, indeed.
The worst part of the facility is without question the smell. Even through the filters of his mask, there's no escape. "Guess there won't be survivors," he says, shining a light on a particularly organic-looking smear, and then promptly wishing he hadn't. If it's not blood, it's a pretty reasonable fascimile thereof.
"...Security's still active?" he says, when the cannons shift into position. "Wait, was that the gate--"
What passes next passes with nothing less than perfect silence from the medic.
Punctuated with a flinch as the gate crunches on another of the figures.
He only breaks his silence at length:
"What the... Leah, what is this?"
Her answer is perfectly pragmatic.
He pauses, then nods. Not alive... no, of course not. "Stay here, and don't move," he cautions Lan. "Not yet."
He begins to dredge up Ether -- easy, in here -- to weave a thread of speed into his and Lan's bodies. "Get ready..."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
"Headache... got it. You'll be okay, right?" she asks after Leah. Lan wishes, at times like these, that she didn't actually have a nose. Breathing through her mouth seems even worse, because the reek of sickness and rot in the air is so heavy she could swear she can taste it. "I'm not going to bother them!" she protests. They're not good for eating, even she can tell that much. Who would eat a fish from a place like this, anyway?!
"The whole place feels wrong," Lan murmurs unnecessarily. "Like a..." She doesn't have the right words for it, but it seems so much worse than the tombs of Xibalba. Those were made for the dead. Here, though...
Maybe it's more of that corruption, that Not-Malevolence. Whatever's gone wrong here... she doesn't like it, not one bit.
And that was before the doors opened to a sluggish parade of the walking dead!!
"Ugh--" They better not touch her!! That's gross!! "Loren, stay behind me, okay?" Leah steps off the platform, and Lan draws on the star dwelling inside of her heart. She doesn't dare to move, much less get closer to the shambling creatures; instead she calls on the power of Rigdobrite. "METEORAIN!" she yells, forming a circle with her fingers. Peering through it, she aims several 'cannonballs' made of starstuff at the advancing Drowned.
The spheres crash into and around the dead men, knocking them back (and severing one's head with a lucky shot). But as Loren and Leah told her, she doesn't move otherwise. She just needs to slow them down.
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
The water froths lightly, bubbling up fast as Leah submerges herself. The fish swirl around as she lands close to the maintenance tube network somewhere near the belly of the base. While typically there would be an engineer's lock on these tubes, one is already open, the keycard used to override the lock still lodged in the key reader. While it can't be seen from the surface, long lines of metal slag gather in furrows across the floor and walls of the base, long marks carving in arcs throughout the surfaces. There's not a lot of time to dwell on their meaning -- the switches to the gun system are at the terminus of the tube, a jumper system that needs to be manually bypassed, and the sound of belting ammunition resounds even underwater. Even more pressing are the bizarre aquatic life, underwater eels that take umbrage to the presence of the new intruder. Haunting halo lights descend on her as the fish tr to encircle Leah and latch and tear at her armor, fangs sharp enough to crumple steel menacing the agent.
Above the water, the zombies are helf off neatly by the Rigdobrite-conjured spell, the weight of the boulders smashing into them forcing them to the ground, and rendering them little more than crawling enemies. However, the light of the circle and the somatic components they require is vastly more than enough motion to attract the autocannons. While most are mercifully attracted to the writhing zombies and the meteors, at least two guns reorient in Lan's direction, and threaten to take her hands off at the wrist with extremely precise machine gun fire. Of course, this shouldn't be a problem, given the alacrity spell that Loren just wove with the latent Ether in the air, correct?
The air seems to tilt the moment the Ether is disturbed, for both of the two above water. There is, at the immediacy, nothing happening that can be described with the tongue given by men. Instead, the catwalk lurches precariously without moving at all the more Ether is channelled into the spell. There is a sickening hum in the ear, the brooding cicada sound of some great Mother in the belly of these progressively more corpselike halls. The sound constricts the blood behind the pupils, and hisses a song into the ear that should never have been sung. There is nothing wrong with the spell that Loren weaves -- their speed flows to every limb.
But the moment that song hisses in the ear, it becomes progressively harder to tell which direction is up, and it becomes harder to tell what angle to run, and it becomes harder to even remain standing, as if all of the air left the room in horror, exhaled by some great lung.
That is when the apparition arrives.
Flickering, hissing, taking ten steps for one, the monochrome image of the man in the coat slips past the two on the catwalk, insensate to the zombie missing its head crawling for Lan and Loren nearby. He steps slowly across the catwalk, until he looks up. Other, indistinct shapes surround him, and below, raising weapons. He tilts his head by the smallest increment. One hand lifts to his hip.
And then the image disappears, a nightmare shimmering into nothingness.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
What is this? The simplest answer is that Leah cannot yet be sure of what has happened here. The oppressive curtain of Ether that rests on all of them suggests something dark, indeed--something not at all natural. But to learn, to Watch, this is her task...
But time will tell if the two were ready to stay on their own up there. The blue-haired woman has other concerns for the moment, as her boots clank down against metal surfaces below. She ignores the froth; she does not call forth her magic to manipulate the water around her. Instead she turns, examining the area through her mask, and there is a faint click as her mechanical eye activates and begins to show her input more useful than light in this dark place. She can see thermal readings, the trails of Ether... the hum of electricity. And of course, she can hear the ammunition leading. But first--
First, there are the strange eel creatures, showing their light. Her armor gleams in their light. Her sword remains at her back, useless in the water... But here?
Leah hefts her spear, places both hands on it as they latch and tear--and thrusts it towards the center of one, aiming to spear it entirely and use it as her light source henceforth, the thrust more optimal than a slashing movement here. Next, she extends one mechanical hand, and reaches for the head of another--
If she takes hold, she will crush its skull as easily as she felt its fangs crumple her armor over her arm.
She walks, after that--and walks quickly, despite being underwater, because she does not bother to swim. Her momentum seems her move more quickly as she gets moving.
Bypassing the system should not be difficult; most systems are not designed to stand up against the sort of force she can bring to bear.
Her radio remains in her ear, of course.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"Probably," is Loren's reply on whether he will be okay, which is probably less than comforting to hear. If he does start getting a headache, or worse, an active nosebleed, he wonders just how quickly he'll be able to exit. There shouldn't be this much ambient Ether in a facility, even like this...
Similarly terse is his response on her statement that she's not going to bother them: "Good."
He's distracted by something. She'll get that much, as hidden as he is under the concealment of his armor.
It's not long after that that the dead walk. That Leah vanishes into the depths of the waterpools, which leaves just him and Lan to face down the inexorable march past the cannons.
"I'm armored," he points out, when she says he should get behind her. "You're the one who should keep back!"
He draws out speed, threading it from the ambin the depthsient power that lingers in the air and stringing it into both of their bodies; he would have next reached for defenses and pulled that into restirringality too. But the ease of it makes him pause. Even under the best of sitreachinguations, there is usually some slight resistance when using Ether, as you tell the world to sit up and do as it's told. Here, it's willing.
"Leah? Something's strange--" His earpiece hisses and crackles.
Loren blinks. He turns his head as if he sees or hears something.
there you are
And the world goes strange.
His stomach lurches.
"...singing?" he utters, reaching for a guardrail he can no longer tell where it actually rests in space.
let
It's not here anymore.
me
Where is he standing now?
see
He takes one step backwards, drawing in a breath. His heart is hammering in his chest. Something's wrong something's wrong something's wrong--
Armored, his gaze tilts upwards.
"You--"
From where it's holstered at his hip, Loren draws the standard-issue officer's sidearm. At something nothing he takes a shot.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
No matter which way Loren wants to fuss at her for it later, Lan does follow his direction to the T: she doesn't move!
At least, until she sees a couple of the autocannons reorient themselves towards her. She moves then. A combination of Ether and instinct have her wheeling backwards, possibly knocking Loren to the catwalk if he's not nimble enough. But despite a clumsy dodge, she manages to evade the cannons. She needs those hands!!
It's just that despite knowing that Loren is armored, and she is not, it's her nature to --suffer for others-- protect him.
Her heels clang softly on the grating. She doesn't have the same Ether sensitivity as the other two, and can't feel the unnatural pliability of the energy around them.
She can just hear something, something familiar--
"((mother))?" she mouths silently, eyes distant.
She's on her knees again. Why?
A gunshot goes off near her ear, and Lan startles. Pulled out of the encroaching fog by the sudden noise, she's treated to the sight of the Stranger-- or, perhaps a hallucination of him. "N, no," she mumbles, teeth digging into her lower lip until it threatens to split. "He's not."
"She remembers the sick feeling of watching grass die around him. Of the clutch and strangle of his hand digging into her abdomen. Lan squeezes her eyes shut tight and calls down starlight again, wrenching blasts of silver out of nothingness. The autocannons, the Drowned, and part of the catwalk -- they're pierced through and through and through, a hail of falling stars each no larger than a pebble but thick as a sudden summer rainstorm.
Despite the solid presence of Loren in front of her and the lurking powerhouse that is Leah, Lan feels terribly alone.
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
Underwater, the visibility is uncommonly clear when considering the depth of the base. Though the area was likely sanitary before the seals failed, the ongoing lack of contamination suggests some sort of filtration system, or even worse, some kind of bleaching caused by the effects of the radiant Ether. Truthfully, it causes electric sensations in the skin every so often, even moreso than the cleared water does. The clarity is short-lived however, as the water around the lead operative fogs with grey and red, the bodies of the mutant eels thrashing around her as they are pinned out of place, the thick heave of flesh cord and muscle buffetting Leah's arms. Soon, visibility drops to next to nothing in the tubes, as blood fills it. Luckily, those winsome lights at the skulls of the dead fish provide just enough illumination to see by.
The systems controlling the manual autocannons -- or more appropriately, the shutoffs for them -- are arbited by a jumper system, in that giant jumper switches sit over a set of exposed pins, and the captured switch lifts up and reorients to toggle the autocannons to a range of modes, including diagnostic, off and safety mode. Normally, these switches would be almost impossible to change, being very close to completely rusted shut after only weeks of neglect. One can trust the skills of the special forces to rise to the occasion, however.
Up on the catwalks, the apparition is long gone before Loren's shots fire out, rounds impacting the dull steel walls, and serving as a breakpoint for the intoxicating hallucinations. There is no sound that breaks that din, beyond the audible shuffle of more bodies in the room next door. The radio system crackles and hisses in Loren's ear, unresponsive for the unprecedented amount of Ether radiation in the chalky-tasting air. The peace, tenuous as it is, is short lived.
Lan's attack cuts down rows of drowned men as they burst through the doors, peppering the autocannons and interfering with their target acquisition algorithms. In the next volley, bullets spray wildly in random directions, continuing to attempt to orient on moving targets in the room, a list growing all the smaller as the Baskar's spell takes firmity. This has a cascading effect -- the more targets Lan cuts down, the more autocannons attempt to focus their attacks on her, which necessitates an even greater attack, which attracts more attention from the dead, which --
Eventually, the security system is shut off, granting reprieve and blessed silence.
The room is silent, and mercifully so, after all is said and done, leaving only the bodies to sort through, and the next room to plumb. Loren's radio crackles, indicating his response was heard, and shortly, a garbled reply renders itself.
"~~n, g~~t behind ~~~."
"~~~ is that~~~"
- All the while, thinking that their truth is the only truth. -
The heart stops, for only a moment. For only a moment, it's like looking in a mirror.
For only a moment, you seem older. Your eyes are piercing, horrifying blue.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
It is ugly, down here; some of the blood and viscera will cling to Leah's armor, crunched in places as it is. It is not only over cybernetics; part of her biological arm--what remains of it, of course--is likewise pinched down, cut and spreading a bit of red blood into the water as well. It is not, precisely, healthy.
...It doesn't need to be. Leah considers the feeling of this radiant Ether as she moves, the electric sensations in her skin rattling close to her shielded limbs. She will use her torch, such as it is.
Skill, and sheer power win through, in time. The Watcher is stronger than men, is perhaps more machine than woman now, and without so much as a moment spent dwelling on the unsettling nature of this place she finishes. Then, she taps her ear... and hears static.
"..."
The trip out is faster than the trip in; now that Leah recognizes the path, she snaps her fingers underwater, and gravity for her adjusts--such that forward is down, and she shifts with spear outstretched, 'falling' until she will thunder against what wall there is out there and deactivate the system. A few moments pass, as she bends at the knee, and leaps--
...Of course, it takes time, from when the security system is shut off, and her arrival will not be what breaks the silence.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
The bullets reflect off of nothing at all.
open your eyes
Slowly, he lowers the sidearm. He shakes his head as if attreturnempting to rouse himself, to loose himself of whattoever grips him; he lifts his lemeft hand to his helmet as if he were about to slide back the faceplate and stops.
What... is he doing?
He doesn't have long to contemplate it. The dead still walk and--
And the cannons turn towards them. Lan slams into his side as he reaches the surface of whatever reverie he's begun to drown within, sending him sliding along the walkway. He rises with a start, pulling easily -- too easily -- at the ambient Ether, instructing it to become as walls, earthen barriers to shield her unarmored flesh from the bullets that ring out--
Until, silent, they ring out no more.
The air tastes foul, he notes at last, as he stands amidst a hard-won silence.
"...Are you okay?" he asks, turning towards Lan.
What was that...
His earpiece warbles a reply.
Is that... that's not Leah's voice.
"The Major will be back with us soon," he says to Lan, and it's not so much a lie as a statement of what he believes will be true. "We should scout ahead."
ARM in hand, he advances with care towards the entrance to the next room.
Do hallucinations count as 'adverse exposure events'? He feels fine, physically -- just worn, in the way he thinks anyone might after that. He can't leave over what might be nothing.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
She just has to endure a little longer. Shine a little brighter. Cast harder. Don't give up...!
Every cannon that swings toward her is destroyed, either via starlight or (what she hopes is) Leah's interference. The longer she holds a spell, the harder it can be to control; before long it's only sheer dogged stubbornness and no small amount of panic keeping the starlight falling.
Until there's beloved, blessed quiet in the rancid halls of this place, Lan's breath coming quick and shallow as she rests her hands on her knees. "I'm... fine," she gulps, and wipes the sweat from her forehead. "It was just my imagination." Despite the wandering dead. Despite the fact that Loren had clearly seen something too.
Miraculously, she's unhurt. Once she's caught her breath, Lan gives the surface of the filthy water a last, reserved look before following Loren into the room that had until recently been crawling with nightmares. "What did you see," she blurts out suddenly, almost as if she's afraid of the answer. "I thought... it looked like that man," she continues stubbornly. "The one you called Azazel. But it was just... that couldn't have been a memory, right? Was he here? Is this," her voice soft, "...Could he have done this....?"
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
Somewhat mercifully, the apparition and the hallucinations fade, and with the security systems (for the moment at least) shut off, there are few other dangers in the room or the reception beyond that can't be circumvented easily. A few dead men scrabble the halls, but by and large, there are less threats in the field beyond than prior.
The natural incline of the base seems steeper in the junction halls beyond, and it is obvious that attempts were made to compensate for it through engineering bridges. Unfortunately, due to the damage the base has sustained through the halls, most of the catwalk structure has been decimated or quartered by recent events, molten-shorn steel putting various sections of scaffolding into the water below, other sections still sparking visibly due to electric interference, and though there are fewer instances of 'wildlife,' per se, sections of catwalk are visibly energized, and consequently, so is the water.
The area branches off into several sectors, which are the primary research halls for the Gethsemane base. However, security systems have hermeticall sealed off several doors, and sounds come from each in turn: One, a steady pounding sound of something very, very large. Two, three and five are relatively nondescript. There is sounds of scuffling behind door number six, and seven seems to be infested with barnacles, organic material seeping through the seals on the door, and absently grasping in thin fingers towards whatever seems closest enough to rouse it.
Doors four and seven are open, and four seems to have the worst of it.
A bloody trail leads right into the door, which is a plainly visible and unoccupied research bay, but a body seems to have been drug through the entryway, and though the door is still sealed, only one or two pieces of the door remain, with the parts laying half submerged somewhere below the catwalk. The entire end of the hall looks like it was struck out with God's paint knife, harsh lines scored into the steel. Inside, there is a downed Gebler soldier. Well, half of him, anyway, his hands are dug up to the second knuckle into the sides of his helmet, fingers piercing the casing before they broke. You can see where he initially impacted the wall, a peculiar three-angled symbol cut into the wall in blood red--
-- Come at me, again and again. Again and again. Over and over, until you finally realize the truth. --
A flicker of light, and a body drops from above in the main room, splashing into the water with a flash of light. A spear of light trails through the party of iscariot, strafing past as it scatters them like gathered birds. Another body falls down the stairs, crumpling at the foot of it, like a ragdoll.
-- nothing's there.
No matter how hard one looks, you will not be able to find the bodies that landed just a moment ago. The body fell down a short section of stairs leading to the head of the base, the command bridge. The stairs are at the far end of the hall, but in plain view. Of course, the body that just hit the ground a few moments ago is simply not there the next time one blinks. The command bridge, whose gate is larger than the rest, is the only other open door, thogh the gate is only sagging half open, shutting and opening on a slow clunking rhythm. Going from one end of its mechanical cycle to the other, it never quite shuts and never quite opens, as if hopelessly jammed.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
As Leah emerges from the water and then lands on the catwalk, she looks up, and then forward, and then around. She puts together some of what must have happened... But only some. There is a strangeness here, and she cannot entirely explain it. She sets her spear down, looks to the lamp, the broken eel still placed on it. She considers--
She lowers her spear, and throws it off. Then, forward. Step step, step step, her uneven gait, as water drips down her person, some of it red, some of it black with the things of the deep.
The incline does not bother her. The hallucinations... Well, they seem to be gone before she gets here.
But soon she catches up with the other two. "It took a bit longer than I would have preferred," she announces her prsence, and then shifts forward, to look to the doors. The branches; several are blocked; several have sounds. Pound, pound, pound.. Scuffling. And--
Again, the same organic material as on those others. "...Hm," Leah comments as she looks to the material. "This wasn't part of their approved research..."
Four and seven; these are open. Leah looks to the blood, which would naturally be the way they should look, considering. There are the lines again, like the furrows of steel, and there is the man.
"...Self-inflicted," she murmurs thoughtfully--
A voice, and light. Leah pauses, and looks up--then down. But the body is gone in an instant. "..."
"...The two of you can turn back, if you wish," the Watcher says, and her voice is still modulated, still mechanical, faintly inhuman and utterly strange. "Do not touch anything organic--or anything else, if you can help it. Consider this entire base to be a biohazard."
Leah begins to step towards the command bridge. Should she reach the gate, she will take hold of it with her mechanical hands, and shove it open with unholy strength.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"Imagination..." He shakes his head. "Be careful. We need to stay focused." As if he hadn't just been swept up into a moment of his own.
He stops before he can reach the door. 'What did you see?'
"I didn't see a--"
Azazel. She saw him too. He rounds towards her, gazing at her from behind the helmet faceplate. "I don't know. I don't even know if it was real." Footsteps, then, ring out behind them. He turns, sharply.
"Le--Major. Everything is fine," Loren reports, turning a glance himself at the destruction around them. "Under the circumstances," he amends, punctuating that bit of realism with a short shake of the head. "Something's strange with the Ether. It feels too easy to use. But I haven't felt any unusual effects."
Other than the flickers of a familiar hallucination.
The appearance of Azazel -- perhaps.
The distortion effect in the room.
"...Nothing that suggests overexposure," he appends. "Something isn't right in here."
They should leave.
"...but as it stands we won't have much for the report if we retreat now."
Unfortunately, this is also true.
"..."
In they go.
He stares at the remains of the soldier for a good, long moment. "...Half the man he used to be," Loren comments flatly. A coping mechanism, though a dark one. "...Major, what's going on in here? Why are they like this? --What?" He glances away, up. Then back again. Not a trace remains. "...A hallucination? Is this from the Ether concentration?"
'The two of you can turn back.'
Loren takes a step forward. He shakes his head. "I can't do that, ma'am. I'm present as your support. If you began to succumb..." He turns his head towards Lan, eyeing again her current apparel. Pausing a moment, he opens his bag, pulls out a pair of rubber gloves and tosses them to Lan. "Here. They're not very durable, but if you need to touch anything, use these. Don't even touch the railings without them."
When he reaches for the Ether again, it's more reluctant. "Leah-- I'm going to try to wedge it open," he calls out as a warning, before forcing his will upon the stuttering gate. Blink, and you might miss the appearance of the ragged pillar of stone, spiralling up through the air towards the uppermost frame of the gate.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
It's times and places like this that Lan's ribbon comes in handiest. While it doesn't do anything as useful as, say, making them invincible against electrocution, it does let Lan negate a good part of their own gravity. It's nowhere near as powerful as Leah's ability, but at least it's gentler.
Lan doesn't want to crash through a wall just because she forgot to adjust for the weight of two people or something.
Even through the helmet's faceplate, she can see the wideness of Loren's eyes when he turns back to her. It's not really a comfort that he looks as spooked as she feels...
She's more than glad to see the other woman, despite the more-than-imposing figure the Major cuts as she stalks across the steel floors. Lan does, at least, manage to restrain herself from taking a flying leap for Leah. It's probably (absolutely) the sheer amount of blood and bio-goo dripping from her.
Loren says that he can't go back. "...I just hope we're more successful than the rest of the people down here were," she sighs eventually, and falls in after them. It's not like she can leave them here on their own! And to be truthful, Lan isn't going to want to be alone with her thoughts for a while after this.
Not with the taste of the Stranger's killing intent so fresh in her mouth.
Lan accepts the gloves and jams her hands into them. "Everything's so gross," she mutters, squeaking the rubber nervously between her fingertips. Even if she doesn't look at it, Lan can hear everything that's wrong...
"Let's be really careful, okay?" she doesn't beg.
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
The bodies are no longer there. But the blood remains.
The command gate is forced open by the major's strength, the machinery in the periphery of the unit emitting a horrific groan as the gears crack beneath the weight. The pistons labor, trying to shut the door once unstuck, but a column of earth twists into the upper frame of the gate, causing the entire frame to creak audibly as the weight is redistributed through the complex's framing, strutwork supporting the command module above the hall squealing.
The vestibule leading up to the bridge is infested with the little crawling barnacle-like creatures, but they do not seem to be anywhere near as active as the others running throughout the complex, some skittering by ignorant of newcomers, others squirming on their backs, wriggling about ten legs too many as you pass.
Steel buries itself in them as you pass. If you look a second time, you don't see anything, but the creatures seem like they have been dead for quite some time. on a second inspection.
Most of the expeditionary team seems to be here, laying sprawled about and motionless, as if simply laying down where they stood and never moving again. Most of the bridge's computer equipment seems to be intact, calculations running on some odd 'overload Ether output range' calculations, vectors outlining a circle overlaying a terrain graph, with graded areas shading some elements of the circle in overlay. Other screens are calculating other things, like 'the futility of life itself,' 'number of iterations to final death.' Other screens are pouring water from their fringes. Others are displaying more dimensions than they should be. Another screen seems to be indicating that the systems are running a simulation on 'the median time to die from despair.'
He's standing there, you know.
The young man in the grey coat stands at the extreme end of the bridge, alongside the panorama glass showing the fathomless deep beyond, a view reinforced with metal struts, securing it. If you stare overlong at the Gebler symbol at the back of his coat, the room will almost invariably tilt. If you blink, he never seems to be standing in quite the same location as when you last saw. But he is there.
"And so you come again, to your destruction," the nameless agent notices, his voice endlessly inviting.
The cicada buzz is louder here. It is drowning out rational thoughts.
DC: You switch forms to Gebler Medic Loren! DC: Loren Voss switches forms to Gebler Medic Loren!
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
Bodies, and blood. Hallucinations? Visions of the past, or simply visions? Leah notes that Loren uses her title, such as it is. One of them. ...It will do; she can keep that role. It is a way of holding someone up.
"Yes," The Major agrees. "It does." She pauses. Something is unusual--but--
"If things were right," the older woman says, "Then we wouldn't have been sent."
Leah's face can't be seen through the mask--so rather than simply smiling at Lan's obvious relief, she inclines her head. "Glad to see you," she says, before they move forward. Loren's joke gets a little shrug. "You know," she says, "I sympathize with his predicament." This is entirely deadpan.
"...It may be from the Ether concentration." Loren can't go back. Lan hopes they're more successful than the others. "As you wish," she says, and it is a bit like a bell tolling. "We'll go on together. From this point... We won't be splitting up again."
This, perhaps, is the first obvious sign of real concern from Leah; she has been strangely, disturbingly unaffected by the horrors in play, but here, even she makes an allowance to this place's danger.
"We'll be careful."
The gate is easy; the gate is a problem that can be broken, can be physically mastered, and thus, it is not a threat. Something else here is that, for which this is only the prelude.
Creatures; here, then long-dead. The expeditionary team... Leah looks over each computer. She notes the calculations, considers the overlay, spots futility, death...
"I see," the Watcher says, and looks then to the young man in the grey coat. She does not stare; she merely watches him, noting his features, noting the movements here and then, and the buzz...
There is always the buzz, in Leah's mind. There is always the approach of insensate drowning, it only differs from where it comes.
"No," she answers simply. "That was long, long ago." She pauses, then. She waits, for the two beside her, to react, to show some movement.
"Were the organic elements here when you arrived?" she asks, before she begins to walk, not for him--but for the terminal that reads of the time to die from despair. That is a good one to start with, she thinks.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He's called her by her first name more already more times than is likely proper, and on missions at that. He can't keep thinking of her as 'family' in these situations -- already, he's leaning on her more than he ought to.
Even if leaning on her is what he instinctively wants to do, in the environment of Gebler where he has few to none supports as it is. But how will he ever manage by himself if he can't even get this right...
"...I know that," he replies. They should bomb this place. Already, something's wrong here. Something coils heavily in the base of his spine, fortelling a fate he can't speak to or properly understand save for its ill intent.
But if she won't leave, he won't leave, either. Because that's the essential paradox of his being: without her, he's lost. And with her, he wants to find his own way.
He exhales a breath when Leah makes a particular comment, and in the moment, it's hard to say if it was a sigh, a sudden breath, or a huff of a laugh. Or perhaps it's an amalgam of them all -- stress does funny things to people.
From this point on, they won't part again. "Understood," he says, straightening.
And then he works upon the gate. It doesn't take much to ensure it won't close on them.
It takes even less to pass on through, into the nerve center of the compound that lies beyond. His gaze at first steals towards the screens. "What were they... doing...?" He trails out as his attention moves off and towards the young man standing there.
Or... was it there?
Or there?
Was the room always it was tilted at this particular angle?
But he's just as beautiful terrible as he was the last time.
The air buzzes. This time it does not come from within.
Behind the mask he's grit his teeth as if pained. His shoulders hunch. "Leah--"
Right now, he forgets himself. "That's him-- Azazel--"
It feels like swimming through tar. Yet he reaches for it, takes a breath, layers his will upon the force that exists in surfeit here and drags it out. Leah. He should protect Leah. And yet-- she's not his only responsbility.
Lan, briefly, is clothed in crystalline light.
And Loren takes another breath. Every nerve in his body burns.
GS: Loren Voss has attacked Lan Lilac with Barrier Factor! GS: Loren Voss has gained 1 Combo! GS: Loren Voss has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
She's never wished for boots before in her entire life, and yet all she can think of is how naked her feet are. How water and mud feel between the sole of her foot and her sandal. How close she has to walk to the shivering, squealing, dying creatures that litter the floor. Lan's toes curl inward against the stained, once-white canvas of her shoes at the thought of it.
The monitors arrayed around the room are, somehow, even less comforting.
It hurts her head to look at them, for varying reasons. Either the painful words, or the incomprehensible geometry, or maybe it's just that the cicada song is growing stronger. Stronger, it seems, with every step she takes.
She wants to go home...
And that's before she sees the Stranger, what might be him - might be a memory - might be an afterimage left over from his taint soaking into the fabric of this place, like a scar left in time itself. Loren sees him too.
The thin barrier of crystalline light that settles over her does nothing for her lightheadedness, for the coppery tang in her mouth. She won't be sick. She won't be sick. She won't--
At her sides, Lan's hands curl into fists as she struggles to steady her breathing. Just... it's harder here. Harder when she's scared, to know what to do.
But she has to protect Loren and Leah as much as she can, and the Stranger has already killed her once. ...Twice, she recalls.
Maybe that's what the screen meant. She'll have to ask them later just what an 'iteration' is.
Ink seeps out through her skin, clasping around her wrists like bracelets. Like handcuffs. "I see him," she grits out, and wishes she didn't.
How can Leah be so brave...?! It's all Lan can do to be still, to not run or scream or fight...
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
"So many questions, things to which you come time and time again to ask. But you already know the answer, don't you."
The young man does not move from his spot for the moment, as the three gather before him to dance once more. He stands there, the sleeves of his coat dancing about the knuckles of his gloved hands. He shifts, and as he moves, it is less that he moves, and it feels like the entire bridge reorients on his axis. Even something as simple as the agent running a hand through his hair is accompanied by a supreme sense of vertigo, the problem with having so much Ether in this tight of an area. How much of it is emanating from him?
"Gethsemane... one of the oldest bases. It is a fitting place to ideate the end of the world..."
His voice is hushed, his tone polite, calm, conversational. But no matter how quiet he is, it does not steady the buzz that reverberates in the room, that steady 8 Hz tone that harshly cuts into the attention span. Even so, when the nightmare spinner turns, and shows them the dignity of his face, his dispassion is steady, matching the screens. No matter how much you type or what you enter, the screens continue calculating genocide, on at least four different axes.
"It was a long time," he remarks to Leah. "I'm glad you came back." He lifts his blade in the air, the Eclipse Saber. Gebler Ether weapons at their finest. "Wait for me," he remarks, his hand dripping blood over the hilt. The energy begins to crawl over the glass behind him, threading in multiple labyrinthine lines, as if forming spiderweb cracks of their own. In another eyeblink, he is no longer armed again. Another eyeblink, and then he is gone. Another eyeblink, and he is fractured.
An idea: He moves towards the Baskar, his blade in his hand. His steps are slow, quiet, respecting. He stands not far from her. He looks down to the slain creatures near her, which still writhe on the end of his blade, from where he drove it down through her skull. Excuse me?
She lays underneath his blade, pinned to the ground by the head instead of the bizarre crabs. But she stands only a few steps away from him. He looks down at her, sadly. And then he looks up at her, his awful blue eyes beckoning her to come out of her protective cocoon.
Another idea: The spinner is in front of Loren in only a heartbeat, his other iteration murdering the crab entities near Lan. If Loren focuses on the blade for longer than one instant, he might miss 'Azazel,' standing only inches from him. He pauses, studying the boy in armor, before he reaches out to take Loren by by helmet, touching the surface of the glass, and following the length of the protective helm's jawline confidently. Look at me.
Except, if he even so much as touches Loren, he won't be able to see at all. The inside of his helmet's glass with fog opaque in a heartbeat. And then Loren will be suddenly, starkly aware of the fact that he is not alone, even in his own suit. The suit will be invaded by cold, drowning, grasping hands, a hundred gripping things, filling up his armor and laying hold of every inch of him, following the lines of his body. He will see the shadow of the hands that begin to flow into his helmet last, attempting to crush, crumple, suffocate him where he's standing.
The nightmare spinner stands not far from Leah, near the computer banks. He doesn't say anything, not really. Instead, he rests his hands on the controls, and resets the algorithms, starting the calculations over again, before picking up a case and -- flickering out of existence.
He has never moved from where he initially stood.
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Lan Lilac with Hope Evisceration! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has spent 1 Combo on Disease, including 0 on Gatling! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Loren Voss with Merciless Genesis! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Nightmare Crown! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has completed his action. GS: Isiris Shango'Ra takes a solid hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's Nightmare Crown for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper! Statuses applied to Isiris Shango'Ra! GS: Loren Voss critically Guards a hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's Merciless Genesis for 21 hit points! GS: Loren Voss has gained 1 Combo! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has lost 1 Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
It is easy, to assume that what Leah does is bravery. It is easy, to assume that her unflappable demeanor is one of courage. ...But valor only exists in the face of fear; there cannot be one without the other. The Watcher has long since shed such things as fear.
So it is not brave. It is, if one looks, if one looks at just the right instant--Just then, just in the right heartbeat...
Her dispassion is not so different from that of 'Azazel', really.
"...Yes," Leah tells Loren, as he warns her. Still, her voice is modulated. "I recognize him."
So many questions--many that make sense, many that are, or aren't useful. Leah can see Lan's fear, can feel it, in a sense. It is sad, to see her suffer, but here, in this place... It is inevitable. Leah hopes that she and Loren both can come through something like this.
"..." She does not answer, immediately--not until the nightmare spinner addresses her direction, and she inclines her head. "It is my task, to come back."
She reaches up, this time, and does not watch the labyrinthine lines of his movement. She instead shifts the clasps of her mask and helmet, and pulls the both of them off, shaking out her blue hair, revealing her single eye and eyepatch. Ah--here is the dispassion.
"I imagined that you wouldn't make things this easy," Leah says. "...Did I know it was you, or do I know now that I have known, when it wasn't true before?"
"I suppose it's not that important." Leah turns away from the console. "...This base is well-suited to thinking of destruction, as you say. It is, in a sense, its broader purpose."
"...You will play your part, and I suppose, I will play mine. It was decided long ago, when we came here before we came here."
Leah turns to Loren, first, and extends one of her hands. Ether pulses, ripples in this suffused place, as she constructs Water to guide and shield and hold, in a sense, preparing for what must come.
"Lan," Leah says, and it is in her own voice. "Loren."
She waits, to see if they can hear.
GS: Leah Sadalbari has attacked Loren Voss with Healing Rain! GS: Leah Sadalbari has gained 1 Combo! GS: Leah Sadalbari has completed her action. GS: Shield! Statuses applied to Lan Lilac! GS: Shield! Statuses applied to Loren Voss! GS: Leah Sadalbari heals Loren Voss! He gains 100 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"'The end of the world'? What are you talking about..."
His heart is pounding. He's sure if he took his pulse right now, it would barely do justice to the rhythm in his veins. He takes a breath. Focus. Focus. Hold yourself together.
You're not alone this time.
"Lan--" He can see the form advancing upon her.
Just like that: Loren blinks, and there, in his immediate line of sight, there stands Azazel. A hand snakes out, touching his helmet and drawing his attention to the nightmare spinner, tracing its outline in a way that gives the young medic pause. Loren jerks back a moment later. "Don't touch me!" he roars in retaliation.
Shadow floods in from within. What--
He can't see a thing--
Something's-- inside--
He recoils another step. Reaching up he disengages the locks keeping his helmet in place. Wrenching it from where it's tethered, he hurls the helmet away, to one side. Shadow pours up into the air from the neck of his body armor, fleetingly so.
He stares at Azazel. Through Azazel. He manages to take a breath.
A cold sweat, already, drips down the side of his face. "You... what did you..."
The pulse of Ether washes over him, sinking deep into his body and spreading out within. Inch by inch, he eases, the newly-wrought tension ratcheting back to a sustainable sticking point. The nature of water as he knows it well -- shield and source of life and strength alike.
He draws upon in, winding a fraction of what was given in an array of fractalling green, and adds to it his own power. The earth is never entirely stable but therein lies its power.
And returns it to her.
"...Leah. I'm ready. Lan... get behind us."
GS: Loren Voss has attacked Leah Sadalbari with Healing Function! GS: Loren Voss has gained 1 Combo! GS: Loren Voss has completed his action. GS: Hyper! Statuses applied to Leah Sadalbari! GS: Loren Voss heals Leah Sadalbari! She gains 100 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
It hurts to be so close. To be anywhere near him, to see his face, to hear his voice, soft as a rabbit's pelt. It hurts in ways that only the Stranger has ever taught her to feel.
She'd wanted to believe that he was just an illusion, just a ghost or a memory teased from her brain by the insane density of Ether trapped in such a contained place. Just another monster, dredged up by whatever created the Drowned. Lan knows it was foolish, but she can be forgiven for foolishness, can't she?
The silver blade bisecting the world forgives nothing. Lan blinks sluggishly, one eyelid slower to rise than the other, a trickle of red pooling in the inside corner of her left eye. He looks so sad, she thinks. He looks so sad. She wonders if he'll pull the sword out before or after she dies--
Lan chokes on the vision, on the feeling of her brain being split in two, her knees threatening to give way beneath her. No. No. No. It didn't happen. Not really. It's another one of his tricks, she tells herself. It's that other Lan, the one who drowned, the one who-- They call her name. Lan sucks in a breath and focuses. They're here. If she doesn't protect them, if she doesn't use everything she's got, he's going to die.
From the corner of her eye, Lan sees them wrench their helmets off. The look on Loren's face--
She remembers the creep of hands up her legs, over her mouth. Inside of her. Lan covers the scar on her belly with both hands, weight shifting as if she wants to back away. "..." Why can't she talk? Why can't she say anything?
Why does she have to be this way? Why can't she just... be?
Lan looks away from the other two, and spreads her feet wider apart on the metal floor. "I'm not running," she says, though she doesn't know who to. Concentrate. The black ink begins to crawl up her arms.
GS: Lan Lilac has gained 1 Combo! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has lost 1 Combo! DC: MISS! Lan Lilac completely evades Hope Evisceration from Isiris Shango'Ra! GS: Lan Lilac has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
He slowly approaches, descending to the bridge level.
The young nameless man is quiet, perhaps even a little sad as he looks from one to the other. There is the crushing sense of repetition to his steps, as if he's taken each a hundred times prior, as if he is merely going through the motions of the thing, like singing a song that one has heard a hundred times, the kind that makes you feel like you're the only person left alive in the world.
The number of bodies doubles on the ground, to six. Then to twelve.
There is a synchronicity in Leah and himself. The inverted world is one he is intimately familiar with, and those who know what it is like to 'die' are different from those who know only what it is like to 'live.' There is a paradox in it, and it is a terrible thing. "You know, then, that I have already seized that which is important. It was decided," he agrees. "Long ago. This inevitability is something you know. Deep in your blood, you know. You are here only to pay tribute."
Slowly, one set of three stand, their bodies becoming more distinct.
The computer screens calculate the probability of dying: 30% for the fourth iteration. Next time will be better.
"This has already occurred," the blue-eyed man remarks quietly.
Flashes of impressions occur in the mind. Of Lan almost drowning in an electric deathtrap. Of Loren being thrown down stairs. Of Leah almost being crushed by a door. A spear drives its way through the killer. In another impression, he cuts someone down. Eels wrapping around torsos, and barnacle monsters mutating slowly from madness Ether are just some of the images flickering through the mind. The journey made to Gethsemane, over and over again. The bodies that stand before him now are yours. They've always been yours.
You were the expeditionary party you've come to investigate.
But.. didn't that party die?
The young man steps down from his perch, and draws his blade from a cascade of black feathers. "We will dance, again and again, as many times as is needed.." The impression of him still stands at the top of the bridge, and looks up slowly. Something happens behind him, something in the glass, and then all three people standing before him -- the corpses that stood -- fall. They fall, again and again. They fall in the same way. Only to get up, and fall again. They find their way here, again and again, to Gethsemane. Only to die a little more each time. It has happened before, and it will happen again, when the time runs out.
That is the meaning of the Nexus Hours Theory Chapter VIVISECTA.
"... for you to learn the truth."
The nightmare spinner moves so fast, that it's impossible to tell when and where his sword enters.
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Leah Sadalbari with A World Without! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Lan Lilac with A World Without! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Loren Voss with A World Without! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has gained 1 Combo! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has completed his action. GS: Sneak! The true nature of Isiris Shango'Ra's attack becomes clear! GS: Loren Voss guards a hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's Sin Axiom for 109 hit points! GS: Toxin! Statuses applied to Loren Voss! GS: Leah Sadalbari critically Guards a hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's A World Without for 32 hit points! GS: Leah Sadalbari has gained 1 Combo! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has lost 1 Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
Images, scents, sounds, textures--over and over, melding, distinct but flowing, like a river except, perhaps, that the water is not what is flowing. Leah maintains a certain tally in her mind of what is changing, what is different--it's nearly dreamlike, the awareness she finds that she has of what is happening.
Earth suffuses her, steadies her, resonates with the artificial limbs that make up much of her body. Her single eye, visible now, shifts to Lan, in that moment, as she focuses--as she looks away, and says...
"Yes," Leah answers both. "Some things can't be avoided. This..."
Leah watches one version of the young man, one of many; there are many bodies. She, too, understands something different here. And what he says--she finds that she knew it, before she knew that she knew it. It was decided.
"Long ago," Leah agrees. "This place is already lost. ...But we are not finished here."
Yes, she finds it. One set of three stand; the screens begin to make sense. It has already occurred....
Over, and over, but Leah does not find it strange to watch herself dead. There are many reflective surfaces in Etrenank. She does not find it strange, to see the others. But it clicks into place, and it is less a puzzle solved and more a familiar mantle settling about her shoulders. Death, again...
"The truth," Leah agrees. "But that isn't all."
"...Lan. Loren." Leah begins to turn; the blade strikes towards her, again and again; the speed with which the nightmare spinner moves is too much to follow. But she is a rock around which all flows, and the blade that slides through her side goes through armor, goes through flesh... But spills only blood.
What need do the dead have for blood?
"You've taken the first step, again. ...Whatever you do..."
"Do not wait for me."
Leah turns, ponderously slow, before she bends at the knee--And leaps.
With terrifying weight she crashes downward, speak first, cracking floor and shaking terminals with her impact towards her opposite number.
"I," Leah says,, "Am where I must be."
GS: Leah Sadalbari has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Redoubt Posture! GS: Leah Sadalbari has completed her action. GS: Sneak! The true nature of Isiris Shango'Ra's attack becomes clear! GS: Lan Lilac takes a glancing hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's Sin Axiom for 74 hit points! GS: Toxin! Statuses applied to Lan Lilac!
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He glances over at Lan, who seems to reel from whatever she had just experienced. Over at Leah, stalwart as ever. Just in those moments before the man descends what appears to be a familiar path.
Azazel provides insight into why that might be so.
"What..."
It isn't a question as stated, just a short, clipped utterance of disbelief. He turns his head a fraction and watches as he dies. As Lan dies.
As Leah dies.
Over and over, in a dance most impossible.
At one moment, he has him through the gut with the blade. In another moment, it's fatal, and through the heart. In another, the blade is at his neck, in a painless checkmate.
He tries to push back against his brother, but in the end, he might as well attempt to move a mountain.
"Gh..." He remembers the blade's bite. This time, for good or for ill, he doesn't have it with him. Just his armor, and just an officer's -- captain's now -- sidearm.
It shouldn't follow that someone could die one week and get promoted several weeks following.
And yet, time has come untethered. The rule of causality is a lie.
Loren takes a breath, followed soon by another. This is where he you will eternally die? He'd thought he'd had sought more time--
He'd thought it would end be different--
He'd thought--
In the midst of this the weaver of the nightmare strikes. Pain, pure and red, blooms in a crackling flame at his side. For a moment, the young medic staggers.
The blade finds a gap between the plating in his armor and he realizes it is because Azazel has attacked him so many times before.
PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER! his inner self screams. He grips where the blade had bit and breathes out.
'You've taken the first step.'
'Again.'
'Do not wait for me.'
Aren't you a CAPTAIN now? Are you going to shame his choices?!
No! I'm--
"Leah!" he shouts, providing no further warning to his next move, and this whole section of the facility groans with the localized tectonic shift he dredges forth from below. Wires may stretch and snap; like a battering ram of yore, the massive stone spike lurches forward, powered by little else than a young man's sudden determination and fury.
I'm worthy! I'LL PROVE IT!
GS: Loren Voss has spent 1 Combo on Disease, including 0 on Gatling! GS: Loren Voss has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Terra Axiom! GS: Loren Voss takes 8 damage from Toxin! GS: Loren Voss has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Dead, and dying, and fighting, and discovering, and horrified, and encountering, and dead, and dying...
It takes a few precious moments for Lan to understand what she's being shown. That the bodies on the floor aren't illusions or memories-- at least, not entirely one or the other. She had never known the Stranger to express sadness before. Maybe even this isn't regret. Maybe it's just tiredness.
But the flavor of a memory and a dream are different tastes, like cactus water is to tea.
Even though she can't be sure, Lan thinks she may be starting to understand...?
But just because Lan understands something doesn't guarantee that it makes any sense at all.
She raises a hand to her face, fingers digging into the skin at the side of her forehead. "...What's going on?" the shaman murmurs softly, lavender eyes shifting from the Stranger to Leah. "What truth...?"
He moves. He moves. He and he moves, and he, and he-- Lan's sole instinct, at the notion of the blade coming for her, is 'survive'. She twists in place, kicks off of the metal flooring without a second to spare, and escapes with only a deep red flower for her trouble, one that blossoms across the front of her shorts. Underneath, her right hip sports a slash nearly bone-deep. But she's alive. And Lan is alive, and Lan is learning, just like her previous 'iteration' must have learned.
A little more each time. A little deeper, a littler further, a little better. How many times has she reached for the void beyond the stars? How many times has she bound herself? How many times has she been freed?
How many times will she die?
The black ink threatens to crawl off of her fingers, to thread across her face. With some difficulty, she balls her hands into fists and glances at Loren. He should start with a stone spike--
And when she feels the ground start to scream, Lan is already leaping for the spike. To run along it as it reaches for the Stranger, to reach out, to drive her knuckles into the Stranger's throat.
GS: Lan Lilac has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Subdue the Serpent! GS: Lan Lilac has gained 1 Combo! GS: Lan Lilac takes 8 damage from Toxin! GS: Lan Lilac has completed her action. GS: Isiris Shango'Ra takes a glancing hit from Loren Voss's Terra Axiom for 78 hit points! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has been weakened by Disease! They take 0 damage, and burn off all temporary hit points! GS: Disease! Statuses applied to Isiris Shango'Ra! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra takes a glancing hit from Lan Lilac's Subdue the Serpent for 89 hit points! GS: Entangle! Statuses applied to Isiris Shango'Ra! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra takes a glancing hit from Leah Sadalbari's Redoubt Posture for 55 hit points! GS: Cover! Statuses applied to Leah Sadalbari!
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
The grip on reality in a world this dark is already tenuous.
It's hard to tell which person, or where you are attacking even incidentally, like throwing spears at a single fish in the tide. He strides down from the panorama of absolute black, even as flitting impressions of prior injuries, prior deaths pass through the mind. A body dangling off of a blade. Hands wrapped around your throat. You bleed out there, on the hook. He strangled you with his bare hands here. You were crushed, here. You were cut open there. How many times have you been killed here?
The computers continue to compute the net futility.
F = f2(s+R) x d + ^D(t) - h, where f is fear and s is sin and R is rage at it all.
Where d is your death, over t, for time, and D is despair, minus h, for hope...
...equals F, the net futility of resistance.
or is it existence?
He steps down from his perch, and inflicts boundless harm. They bleed, at his feet. They return, and the medic and the major cause the entire dead thing beneath them to shift with their entwined burst. He is destabilized, his boots shifting on the metal floor as the seams beneath it burst and break, Leah's impact throwing him bodily onto the spike, the heavy chains hanging from the service areas of the ship wrapping around the titanic spike as he's pounded into the thing, immobilized tightly against it as his blood sprays against the execution pillar. The spike propells him off the ground, the space in the bridge more than enough to compensate for the vicious adjustment in height.
She runs up the spire after him, the black spreading across her body, as her fist slams into his throat, shattering it, force enough to crack the cliff upon which he is moored. His eyes half-lid as bone and stone break in equal pedigree.
The lines in the glass behind him crack just a sense more with the impact, the only thing separating you from the black. How long is it before you return again? How long is it until you come back, unknowing of your own suffering? The crack spreads, only by inches, contributing to the great bladed symbol it portrays behind him.
His eyes open again, piercing, awful blue--
And the entire world shifts and spins.
The sea becomes the sky, and the base twists on its axis. The tilt becomes unbearable, the cicada buzz piercing the skull like an ice pick. Like a bullet. The nightmare spinner's body and blood remain on the spire as he bleeds, as the world twists on an axis felt more than seen. And from those cracks in the floor made by your own rending, water jets up violently, flooding the lower levels with brackish cold. The jets are high pressure, and great care should be taken not to lose a limb in their spray. They jet across the ceiling, causing a foaming spray, dislodging arc after arc of chains that sag into the bridge, curling, rippling, winding--
The water is deeper than it should ever be.
Hands, the hands of drowned men and women, reach up from the deep. Hundreds, thousands, burst from the water to grasp at whatever's available, to lay hold of ankles, feet, legs. There is an audible cry of a crow. And that's when the chains above curl down, arcing, threatening with a rattle of untold speed, with the uncomprehensible danger of a machine gone haywire. It only takes the slightest second of indecision, the slightest second of distraction for the chains to lay hold of a tender neck, to catch on the slightest vagary of clothing.
Then they will be wound about your neck. And you will be in the sky, while being pulled down towards the deep.
He is incomprehensibly calm.
The nightmare spinner is at the foot of the spire, quietly ascending towards the last of the three, the one who came the closest. If she finds herself too involved with killing him, too involved with what's happening behind her, she is going to take his place at the tip of the spire, tied fast to it with chains. He will ascend quietly, with all of the nobility and gentle nature of a savior. He will ascend quietly, even as he in the same second rotates the world, and puts the entire weight of the sky into pulling Leah and Loren apart at the waist. She was the tip of their sword. So he goes to meet her, politely, personally, with those awful eyes.
He makes them watch eachother, as he flips the blade reverse, just like he did with the vermin only a moment prior. He makes them watch eachother, as he tries to pull them apart, piece by piece, with the same preternatural calm as before.
And if they take a moment too long to prove themselves, he will then make them watch as he slides the blade into her slow.
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Loren Voss with Nexus Hours Theory! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Lan Lilac with Nexus Hours Theory! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Leah Sadalbari with Nexus Hours Theory! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has gained 1 Combo! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Under a Disastrous Moon! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra takes a solid hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's Under a Disastrous Moon for 0 hit points! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra gains Restore, shortening negative statuses by 3 turns each! GS: Lock and State! Statuses applied to Isiris Shango'Ra! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with slowly! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has gained 2 Combo! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has completed his action. GS: Leah Sadalbari critically Guards a hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's Nexus Hours Theory for 100 hit points! GS: Leah Sadalbari has gained 1 Combo! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has lost 1 Combo! GS: Lan Lilac takes a solid hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's Nexus Hours Theory for 167 hit points! GS: Loren Voss critically Guards a hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's Nexus Hours Theory for 92 hit points! GS: Loren Voss has gained 1 Combo! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has lost 1 Combo! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra takes a solid hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's slowly for 0 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
Loren has called to her--one Loren, this Loren, though Leah can hear the others that called, as well; living, dead, dying. But one calls, and in that instant... She is sure. She is sure that he will prove himself worthy--
...But that may be precisely what he must not do, here. Her expression is blank; she must decide. She must act, in ways that the young and the living cannot.
'What truth...?' Lan asks--what is happening, what is truth, what is this, the questions all run together, some of which were asked and some of which might have been once. And yet--
"There is a way out," Leah tells Lan. "The truth he wishes, and the truth we will see..."
"...My task is not concerned with truth, but with necessity. Do not let go of Loren."
The two are fighting--they are fighting, and they are brilliant, Leah is sure, perhaps more brilliant than any time yet, but what is the fate of a brilliant soldier? Leah watches that fate. Futility... It is anathema, to Leah's nature. How many times, have they all died? How many?
...Not as many times as Leah has died in memory, again, and again, always apart, always away from the one she should have been with. Forever separated, in world after world...
Hope is uncertainty. Hope is a substance that cannot be touched. Knowledge... Knowledge is different.
The glass cracks, and cracks. The world tilts; arc, after arc, as water jets. So many hands are there, so many hands, and Leah knows their faces; they are not only hers, or Lan's, or Loren's, but the faces of those she has condemned herself. But ah--the spire, there. The silence, as the world rotates, and Leah sees perspective change, and--
Ah, no. She closes her eye. Sight is not necessary, now. It never was. The truth is not something that can be seen with the living eye.
No.... that is not the time. Leah feels the pressure, at her waist. She shifts, backward. He is calm, so, perfectly calm, and so many Leahs are around her now, are facing destruction with the same ease as ever, and all wrriors, and yet...
Her spear rises, but slowly--she brings it out, parallel to the ground... and drops it, where it hits the metal grating with a clatter, with an ugly noise that is like a body falling except much lighter. "Duty," she says, raising her voice to cut through the haze, "Is not desire."
"...Duty is not glory. It is not the satisfying crunch of your hated foe's body beneath you. It is not the glow of knowing you will be remembered."
Her hand rises, towards her back, over the shoulder, taking the hilt of a gigantic weapon nearly as wide as she is. With a deep creak, her powerful synthetic muscles take hold of it, and she lifts it, up--and then, one-handed, forward, towards the nightmare spinner. Her eye remains closed. She does not need it. She has other senses, the harmony of Ether suffusing the world, rippling everywhere; the electronic hum of the terminals, speaking their places...
The water, surrounding them, singing to her its song of depth, of death.
"...Duty," the Watcher intones, without the kindness of Leah Sadalbari, "Is the annihilation of need."
She takes the great blade in both hands now, some five feet long itself, bringing it easily to a position parallel now with the ground, up at shoulder-level. "And so I stand."
Leah bends at the knee--and then jumps, slamming her gigantic weapon straight into the floor, into the heart of the room where it connects to terminals and cables and lights all. Her closed eye does not focus upon the slow wounding of Lan. She does not have to see it, to know it. She does not have to know it, to wait through it.
It is not up to her, not completely, whether her fledglings will fly from here.
DC: Leah Sadalbari switches forms to The Watcher! GS: Grigori has spent 4 Combo on Gatling, including 3 on Gatling! GS: Grigori enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Grigori has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Bonecracker! GS: Grigori has completed her action. GS: Grigori used Mystic on Grigori! Status effect durations increased by 2! Temporary HP duration increased by 2! GS: Grigori has activated a Force Action!
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He'd heard about it first from one of his instructors in Jugend. They had said that there was no higher moment than truly being one with the elements -- or to be more precise your element. To feel the flow of fire, to drift with the water, to dance with the wind, to be as rigid as the earth.
He'd thought it was some attempt at being needlessly poetic at best. True, to assert your will over the elements, you had to understand how they worked. You can't press water the way you press earth -- earth doesn't flow or glide like water. But to be one with the elements? Even when he works on someone's body, strings Ether into their flesh and makes the impossible real, it's... just that. It's mechanical. He does as instructed, and it has the desired effect.
In this moment as he drives stone towards the nightmare spinner Azazel, he understands the earth to a degree he never had before.
He had known the earth was angry. He understands that now.
He had known the earth was brutal. This, too, he understands.
More than fire, earth is rage, force, power. He is unmovable and unstoppable, the closest to it he's ever been outside of Drive.
Lan takes the structure he builds and uses it as a platform. A place to start and a place to finish, all born in the bone and flesh.
...Is it futile that even now, he wants to live? Even if he's already died. Here, there, all around himself. On the Moon. In Elru. In the depths beneath Wayside.
"Azazel--"
The world tilts even as Leah speaks. Dimensions like up, down, left, or right no longer have semantic meaning. Everything is abitrary.
Even the notion of a beginning and end.
Who is it now who starts and who finishes, up on the spire where Lan and the weaver of nightmare spar?
He--
She's--
They should have left before. This is their choice, but it's a choice they'll keep on making won't they--
She's going to die. He can't do anything. He'll just get to watch.
Both of them.
He's going to die.
He--
Something grabs at his legs. Something tries to snag his arms. He runs anyway, stopping only to scoop from the floor a broken length of pipe. It's rusted on one end. Jagged and broken.
He runs, though things -- hands, part of his mind supplies, hands -- try to grab and drag him down. Though his boots slip on the stone as he ascends.
Leah is...
His world has narrowed to a fine point as the man comes after Lan so politely with that sword.
"I'M GOING TO KILL YOU!" he screams, thrusting the broken pipe forward as if it were a proper blade.
His form could use some work.
Perhaps if there is a tomorrow -- a break from the nightmare cycle -- it may be a point to address.
For now, there is but the fury he drowns into his thrust.
GS: Loren Voss has spent 4 Combo on Gatling, including 3 on Gatling! GS: Loren Voss enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Loren Voss has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Extinction Edge! GS: Loren Voss has gained 1 Combo! GS: Loren Voss has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
There's too much, always. Water spitting from cracks in the glass, the immeasurable pressure of the depths seeking greedily for any access to the coveted interior of the place that sits like a tumor on the seafloor. Ether so thick in the recycled air that she can almost taste it. The buzz of Mother's song curling cozily around her brainstem, like a snake wrapped around a branch.
Leah calls out to her. Don't leave him? The idea had never crossed her mind.
After all, even Lan understands - it's in her nature to suffer for others.
And when she feels the freezing kiss of chain snaking around her neck, when she understands the weight of stone at her back, Lan doesn't scream or panic or struggle.
It's far too late for that. The Stranger has already caught her in his snare, and she has nothing else. Nothing but starlight, nothing but the void, nothing but--
--nothing but the last chance she might ever get. She's still got one hand free, and rather than tug futilely at the links digging into her neck Lan reaches for the one Loren had called Azazel, just to stab a fingertip into his chest.
The point enters her belly, inches above the scar where he'd killed her the first time. She can't do much but slow him, can only hope it was enough-- her hand drops, fingers wrapping around the blade run through her.
"I won't," she murmurs softly, eyes ringed in red and wound ringed in black. Her fingers creak, blackened fingernails scratching at the metal.
She won't let go. Blood - dark, darker than it should be, isn't it? - gathers in the crease of her mouth. Loren, Leah, hurry, she can't hold like this forever--!!
GS: Lan Lilac has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Counting Stars! GS: Lan Lilac has gained 1 Combo! GS: Lan Lilac takes 13 damage from Toxin! GS: Lan Lilac has completed her action. GS: Isiris Shango'Ra takes a solid hit from Grigori's Bonecracker for 175 hit points! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra takes a solid hit from Loren Voss's Extinction Edge for 119 hit points! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra takes a solid hit from Lan Lilac's Counting Stars for 74 hit points! GS: Break! Statuses applied to Isiris Shango'Ra!
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
The bloom of blood is something that you've seen before, timelessly.
It is bright, against his grey coat.
Why are these things the same as they've ever been? No matter how hard you feel, there is a sense of wrongness about it, as you rage, as you come to him, as you shove that broken pipe through his middle, fully halfway through the spinner, until his body sags beneath the weight of the merciless deathblow. The pipe that Loren holds in his hands is the next axis upon which the world spins, a slow, inexorable thing. Loren can see everything above and below. The bodies of those who came before. They are usually aligned in a certain orientation. First one, then another, then last of all the third. One, then the other, then the third. The one and the other always die closer together than the third. They always do. The third always dies last.
On the raise of things, there is nothing. The nightmare spinner slowly penetrates the Baskar chained by the neck to the ground, to the spire, plunging steel into her middle gently, lowering the blade with redoubling force, the give of her only changed by the hitch in her breath, the wrap of her hand around the blade, causing blood to weep between her fingers. The black teases at her, pries at her. Even as she slams her fingers into him, she can feel something break inside, but it doesn't stop him, her hand buried in the side of his chest as he pierces her further.
Loren penetrates an idea, another iteration of the thing that he fights, a spinner unarmed and strangely compliant to the young medic. He does not stab this Azazel in the back, but the front. The older man is facing him, his eyes half lidded and the same peaceful smile sliding across his face like the knife. The further Loren drives the pipe, a peculiar synchronicity causes him to drive the blade further into Lan's middle. They break free of the chains, but there is no single chain that binds them.
"You know, that is not my name," 'Azazel' comments mildly.
This is now, post the lanze. There is something different, the cataclysmic break of Leah's massive weapon twisting the entire Gethsemane without moving it. The axis changes again, changing some things and leaving others the same, a massive twisting puzzle box. First the blade. Then the pipe. Then the sword. The most infuriatingly small details are changed when the Gethsemane becomes free-floating and twisting, the rupture of water and the pierce of metal ripping up around the major simply stopping in mid-devastation, the burst of blood around her sword replacing the spray of water but freezing in mid-stream. As if time itself has stopped for her, in a world where she has full agency, but nothing else does.
The young agent strides past her, picking his way along the time-frozen blood.
"I see," he remarks, pleased.
And then be begins to ascend the stairs towards the glass panorama.
'Azazel' looks at Loren quietly, the rookie medic with the pipe lodged deep in what would have at one point been his senior's body. "That is not my name," he repeats, time flickering, as if this has happened before. His blood coats Loren's hands. It binds the two together by another axis. And when the nightmare spinner reaches up to Loren's neck, and slowly reaches in to draw his sword out of the medic's throat, Loren will feel nothing at all, no matter what blood he might see. He will only hurt if he looks at the rate at which the spinner's blade is going into Lan's body. It's at the same rate that he kills Lan, the exact same rate. The synchronicity of it --
The world flickers.
"That is not my name," 'Azazel' corrects.
"I would be proud of you," the agent comments, as he strides past the thing that used to be a person, the thing that used to be a Major. "If it were important at all. Can you hear the song, now...? Have you made your choice?" he asks, as he strides up the stairs to the dais, towards the cracking lines in the glass. The glass fractures, slowly giving way despite its reinforcement. But it's not water that sprays through. The cracks form a picture, a portrait of the one symbol that should never be completed, the one that hangs in front of the agent's coat, split in two parts in a clip, one that hangs close to his heart. He looks up at it, as one finger twitches absently. One hand is all that is needed.
"That is not my name," 'Azazel' corrects Loren.
He leans in, even as he draws out the blade.
"Maybe someday I will let you ask her what it is."
The computer screens have largely displayed error symbols on them, before glitching out to an incomprehensible geometric shape, the ideological calculations complete even as the room is struck mortally. Chains, wires, writhing hands and pouring blood are pooling around the mindless Watcher's feet, and he walks past. Even as Lan and Loren descend, he ascends. The ghost of the nightmare spinner reaches the top of the steps, his feet occupying the same space as they were before. The symbol breaking the glass to the black is complete as he does. The three-bladed mindmark. The mindblade. The trivium.
The shape forms in the glass, and then everything is gone.
But it doesn't feel the same...
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has activated a Boss Action! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has activated a Force Action! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has spent 5 Combo on Gatling, including 4 on Gatling! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Loren Voss with A Cruel Orisha! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Grigori with A Cruel Orisha! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Lan Lilac with A Cruel Orisha! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with slowly! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has gained 1 Combo! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has completed his action. GS: Isiris Shango'Ra takes a solid hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's slowly for 0 hit points! GS: Loren Voss guards a hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's A Cruel Orisha for 115 hit points! GS: Grigori has activated a Force Action! GS: Grigori guards a hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's A Cruel Orisha for 118 hit points! GS: Loren Voss used the Force Action Protect! He takes Isiris Shango'Ra's attack on Lan Lilac on himself! GS: Loren Voss has activated a Force Action! GS: Loren Voss critically Guards a hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's A Cruel Orisha for 39 hit points! GS: Loren Voss has gained 1 Combo! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has lost 1 Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Lan's wound is tinged with a dark, inky black.
In this moment, stabbing for the nightmare agent, Loren doesn't notice it. Not even fleetingly.
Hold on, Leah had said, essentially.
Or, to quote her directly, 'do not let go of Loren'.
He hasn't realized it, quite yet. Her wishes. Her orders.
In this moment, he acts only on his desires.
It plunges into him. His hands are slick with blood. Is it-- can it be possible--
In this moment, he thinks only of glory.
'You know, that is not my name,' says the phantom, who proceeds in spite of the destruction that has -- should -- was it -- rent upon his flesh.
In this moment, he desires only Azazel's death.
Everything coils in upon itself. Once again, the nightmare spasms. Leah, he realizes, has frozen. The whole world stands still and dead, all except for him and the agent before him. His heart thuds in his chest. Is... this really where...
In this moment, he wants more than anything to be remembered.
"What... is your name?" he murmurs, in spite of everything. This loop... this loop ends here. It must.
In this moment, he--
He had thought it foolish of Major Yugh, when it became clear that the man feared more than anything his soldiers to fall before him. Wasn't it the role of the subordinates to fall? A leader must endure -- they have the responsibility to continue, to fight again.
Isn't... Lan his subordinate, in a sense, though? It should have been acceptable to let her die. And yet, here he is again, so close to Azazel.
Too close.
The blade slides from his throat. There should be blood. He should die. And yet, all the world instead merely detonates in fireworks of black against his vision. Pain. There's just pain.
He looked.
The pipe falls from his hands with a clatter. The blade slides towards Lan--
One hand at his throat he interposes himself, twisting to sling an arm around her as she undoubtedly buckles. The armor was built to deflect the worst that the world could provide -- well, within reason. Within reason is why the plating shatters, why blood leaks from the wound.
But also why he remains whole.
Duty is the cessation of need.
Leah has no need for herself. She has need only...
He's a captain now. He has his own resposibilities, to his own subordinates -- to his family, to a future he can only carve in a time and place that isn't here. As in the past, at times it is necessary for one to act as needed as well as ordered. This is why the Commander promoted him. Because, under pressure, he can act.
There is no way out but through?
No, there is no way out but back.
"Major--" he barks, hoarse, as if he had taken the blade through the throat, but hadn't that been an illusion? He slings Lan over his shouder, as best he can, and leaps from the pillar.
Green light blooms as he hits the ground. It blazes outwards in a spiralling fractal mandala, green light eternally tracing outwards and in upon itself, asserting a sort of order in a chaotic universe.
"In Canaan!" he shouts.
Code: he'll see her at the rendezvous.
GS: Loren Voss has activated a Force Action! GS: You have activated the Force Action Extend! GS: Loren Voss has attacked Grigori with Restorative Arc! GS: Loren Voss has attacked Loren Voss with Restorative Arc! GS: Loren Voss has attacked Lan Lilac with Restorative Arc! GS: Loren Voss has gained 1 Combo! GS: Loren Voss has completed his action. GS: Lock and State! Statuses applied to Loren Voss! GS: Loren Voss heals Loren Voss! He gains 200 temporary hit points!